Constitutional Exposure: A Postulation for Democracy to Come

Pablo Ghetti
Brazilian diplomat and former lecturer in law (University of Exeter)

B & W 229 x 152 mm | Perfect Bound on White w/Matte Laminate | 226 pages | Paperback ISBN 978-1-910761-04-5 | E-book (PDF) ISBN N/A | 28 August 2017

description

Constitutional Exposure identifies and then builds on the principal postulation in Jacques Derrida’s discourse on ‘democracy to come.’ First, Pablo Ghetti argues that Derrida’s key postulation in democracy to come lies in what is termed ‘constitutional exposure,’ i.e. exposure of the ‘constitutional’ experience of law (constitution–ruin, visibility–invisibility, friendship–enmity, universality–singularity). Second, he intensifies Derrida’s discourse by further addressing both law and the ‘to come.’

There are two obstacles to Derrida’s constitutional exposure: his understanding of juridical law [droit] and the ‘to come’ as opposed to justice and sovereignty, respectively. As in democracy per se, what is needed of law and ‘to come’ is to insist upon ‘their’ exposure. Democracy ‘to come’ is a postulation that still has a ‘to come’ ultimately towards an overexposure as a radical democratic postulation with and beyond Derrida. Such a beyond is thought from within Derrida’s work and his sources, but also through critical legal thought, radical democratic theory, post-Marxism, and the philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy. Working towards a more equal and fuller enjoyment of democracy and the exposed constitution of law, this book crafts various strategies and develops a language through which constitutional settings can be further studied and critiqued, and through which their democratic core can be defended and enhanced.

Democracy to come is still a postulation to come. This is to say there is a future to politics, but not the one expected by pundits, bureaucrats, and centrist politicians whose enjoyment depends on the preservation of the same for the few and the mortifying repetition of suffering for the many. In contrast, as Pablo Ghetti demonstrates in this inspiring intensification of Derrida’s early engagement with democracy, the future of democracy passes through an opening to social critique and exposure to political action. The result is not the Derrida his hagiographers think they know, but one whose iteration calls forth new and powerfully subversive meanings beyond the self-preserving predictions of constitutional and political conventional systems.

— Dr Oscar Guardiola-Rivera (Reader in Law, Birkbeck College)